by Thomas Waite
Vinko had intercepted the photo of her with their new dog as soon as she’d sent it to her boyfriend.
A photo’s low-hanging fruit in the cyber orchard, especially the way you sent it.
Just like her texts, which he’d been hacking for weeks. The two of them were definitely sexually active—something that nauseated him every time he imagined the white girl slapping skin with the dark one. Recently he’d read an elliptical text from the boy apologizing, once more, for the “mishap” when they’d been “doing it.”
Mishap?
Not when push came to shove with a Muslim man. Just try getting an abortion, Emma, if you’re pregnant. Vinko couldn’t wait to intercept those messages, if she lived long enough to send them.
The very thought of her trying to explain to a Muslim why she had to terminate a pregnancy had Vinko shaking his head as he stepped outside. He shaded his eyes with his hand and spotted the goats in the shadow of a giant beech tree.
Time to milk them, but he relished another moment imagining Emma Elkins pregnant—and the messages he could send out with that news. The responses would be volcanic, and that was important because he wanted to move his followers to take real action, not simply brag and snort in chat rooms about their guns and who should be killed. They needed a breakthrough moment to understand their power. The assassination of the Elkins family would do it. Even murdering only Emma could accomplish that much. Nothing destroyed a family faster than the death of a child.
So he luxuriated in thinking about the aftermath, the militant mobilization that would follow, including the exterminations necessary for the building of a self-sufficient nation. He’d already seen to his own needs. Others should, too. Vinko had solar panels on his roofs, and a well drawing the purest water from a depth of four hundred feet.
He also raised his own food—chickens, turkeys, fruits, and vegetables—on three carefully tended acres. You didn’t need a thousand acres, or even a hundred. Three acres could raise it all. Add a deer or elk or bear to the larder and you were set.
“Herd ’em inside,” he commanded Biko, who’d risen from all fours as soon as he’d seen his master. Now the border collie nipped at the goats, driving them toward the barn.
Biko moved back and forth, methodically funneling them toward the open doors. The Gallas hated Biko—until they needed his protection. Then they’d do whatever the dog wanted. The perfect relationship between the herd and the one that kept them safe.
Vinko felt the same about his followers. Nitwits, by and large. But they needed milking too, for their anger and firepower. And they definitely needed direction.
Biko was still nipping the legs of the last of the nannies. They brayed in protest but ran into the barn, straight for the milking pen, leaving their kids behind. People idealized animals, Disneyfied them, believing the mothers would never abandon their young. Horseshit. Even bear sows were known to leave their cubs for lunchmeat when their own lives were threatened. And as a kid he’d personally witnessed a guinea pig mom gobble up her pink offspring as soon as they were born. Nature, red in tooth and claw.
Get used to it, America.
Biko turned his attention back to Vinko. It made his master recall the first time he’d seen a border collie work. Wasn’t in Idaho, but down in Baja, Mexico, during spring break in college. Some of the white guys from the offensive unit had caravanned down to spend a couple of weeks fishing, kayaking, and mountain biking.
On an early morning solo ride Vinko had come barreling over a rise and almost plunged straight down into a large herd of sheep. He’d locked his disc brakes and skidded wildly to a stop.
The sheep scattered like snowflakes in a storm, white fleece swirling left, right, and center, revealing a border collie at the very heart of the chaos. The dog had been a portrait of calm, staring Vinko right in the eye. The QB had taken a good guess at what the canine was thinking: I got this, asshole.
And then the dog went straight to work on those crazed sheep.
Vinko, off his bike, had figured he could sneak by while the herd dog spent the next hour or so chasing down the flock.
Wrong as wrong could be. Vinko had made it only about halfway past where the herd had been congregating before that dog had rounded up every last sheep, and there were at least two hundred of them. Astonishing to watch. It couldn’t have taken the hound more than two minutes.
Then the border collie started back for him. He hadn’t run toward Vinko. He’d trod like a stalker, deliberate, eyes blazing. No more than forty pounds of animal but he’d looked loaded for bear—or Vinko.
Vinko had placed his mango-colored full-suspension bike between the dog and him—and kept moving along. But every step he took was matched in the next instant by the border collie.
Curiously, the animal never drew within six feet of him. When he’d stumbled over a small boulder, the herder had barked, as much as saying, “No excuses. Move!”
Vinko had recovered his balance and hurried away faster, wishing like hell he’d had a can of pepper spray. Just in case.
But “just in case” never happened. After ten minutes of their step-by-step, the dog stopped and watched him leave.
Vinko knew he’d always remember that border collie. He’d respected that canine. The animal had exercised his proper authority and power with great care, doing no damage to Vinko but sending him on his way. That was all Vinko wanted to do to the mongrels in his nation. He wasn’t out for blood, not at all, though he recognized, as any reasonable white man would, that spilling a lot of it was probably inevitable because mongrels were by nature stupid and understood only the power of pain. There was nothing to be done about their limited aptitude but nip at their heels—hard. After all, even goats and sheep had to feel the bite if they refused their masters’ wishes.
Look at them. The nannies were compliant, yielding to his ministrations with the milking machine, though it challenged Vinko at a time like this to be patient with the demands of husbandry when, more than anything, he wanted to get back on his computer and rally his followers.
But Vinko also needed to visit the gun shop in town. That bastard Bones had taken a very valuable Ruger from him. If Vinko had had any faith in the sheriff, he would have reported the theft at gunpoint. But the sheriff hated Vinko and the dozens of other white supremacists still hanging around Hayden Lake. The lawman made no secret of his disgust for their beliefs. But there were ways other than running to the sheriff to deal with Bones. And, regardless, he needed to replace the .357 because he wanted to have a killer weapon on hand at all times.
Right now he carried his dead father’s Pony .380. But he just didn’t trust the Pony’s action as much as the Ruger magic he loved so much.
He’d get his gun back, and it wouldn’t be hard. Bones had glioblastoma, GBM, the most devastating form of brain tumor. He was on a downward path with no way back. And when Vinko once more had his Ruger in hand, he might even do Bones a favor. Or maybe he’d just let him waste away to nothing.
The Idaho Statesman in Boise had published a story about Bones just a week before he’d rolled up in his Porsche. Vinko had missed the tear-jerker when it was published because he hated American newspapers. They all obeyed sharia self-censorship when they should be telling the real story of the country’s undermining from within.
But he’d endured a few minutes with the Statesman report, which of course included an obligatory resurrection of the ESPN interview with Bones and Vinko, and a line that had made the former QB curdle with anger: “While Bones Jackson went on to the NFL Hall of Fame, and has raised millions for charities ranging from childhood nutrition to Alzheimer’s research, his former quarterback, Vinko Horvat, is now an all-but-forgotten goat farmer in Hayden Lake.”
All-but-forgotten.
No question that the line stung. But being considered all-but-forgotten was good. It was better to have people think he had settled wholly into the hick life. That wouldn’t add up to a man who was also a computer mastermind with ten milli
on followers. They’d find out the truth soon enough. He’d emerge more triumphant than he’d ever been on the gridiron.
Vinko gathered up the milk canisters and poured them into a vat for pasteurization. Then he released the nannies. The kids ran up, sure to be disappointed by the empty teats.
He saw to the cleaning of the milking machine, turned on the drip irrigation for a half-acre of greens and a row of rhubarb, then hurried inside to settle in his office. The shades were drawn. They always were. Nobody would ever get a glimpse in there.
Now it was time to up the ante:
“You saw my words last night. You saw Emma Elkins’s photo earlier today. You saw her guard dog. And I know you’ve seen the photo of her black Muslim boyfriend. You’ve seen Emma’s father, too. And you know who her mother is and where they all live. Even the routes they take to school and work. What are you waiting for?
“You’ve told me time and again that you’re organized into cells. You’ve told me you’re armed. You’ve told me you’re all ammoed up, too.
“Now show the world what you can do to a rich bitch and her guard dog. Take down the father and mother if you can, but KILL THE GIRL. Slaughter her and you’ll destroy her mother. Destroy her mother and you’ll puncture the armor of the police state we still call America.
“Talk is cheap.
“Blood is priceless.”
LANA’S PHONE RANG AS she sped down the Beltway. She’d just finished an early morning prep session with Deputy Director Bob Holmes for their testimony tomorrow before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and was headed to her office in Bethesda. With cars and trucks ripping past the Prius at 85 to 90 mph, she pulled onto the shoulder to take the call, trailed by Agent Robin Maray in the Charger. The nation might be enduring gas and diesel shortages but drivers weren’t slowing down. Full-bore ahead, wherever that might lead them, as if what really fueled them was a general, underlying panic. There were ample reasons for it.
The flooding of coastlines continued unabated, with hundreds of thousands of refugees from shoreline communities pressing inward. The number of displaced Americans had yet to be calculated with precision but the estimates now ranged upwards of three million—on the East Coast alone. Southern California was seeing similar numbers. Communities on both coasts stood abandoned, roofs now low-lying islands in the rising seas. Long Island, with the geometry of a table top, had shrunk by twenty percent.
The news on Lana’s phone was no less disturbing. The fashionable young sandy-haired lawyer who’d briefed her and Holmes had just sent Lana what could be a preview of tomorrow’s hearing, video of a corpulent member of the Select Committee on Intelligence denouncing CyberFortress: “They’re getting massive, million-dollar contracts, letting Lana Elkins fatten on the fear that grips our great land. That money should be going straight to the fine law enforcement officers who now form the front line of our mighty nation’s defense.” Then the senior senator from Louisiana castigated Lana further for “stealing” Galina Bortnik: “Elkins not only drains our treasury, she drains our brain power, too, spending taxpayer money to hire a brilliant young Russian computer hacker who’s only here because brave members of our military saved her from the treacherous claws of Russian thugs.”
Lana winced at the memory of the SEALs who’d died on that mission, but the senator wasn’t playing fair: she and Don came close to dying as well, and both had received secret commendations from the President for their heroism. Not the first time in Lana’s case.
Will this crap never end? The political wars.
Lana had so much going on right now her head felt as if it would explode. The single most harrowing message on her phone today had come from Jeff Jensen when she’d been on her way out to Fort Meade: a Steel Fist diatribe against her daughter that included a command to his followers to kill Emma—and ended with the words “Blood is priceless” that had almost sickened Lana.
First, Tahir had threatened her daughter’s life, and now the other end of the political spectrum, Steel Fist, had openly called for his followers to “slaughter” Emma to “destroy her mother.”
Those goddamn animals.
The latest threats from Steel Fist came in the midst of a short breather from terrorism. More than seventy-two hours had passed without an attack or bombing. Commentators were claiming the relative calm reflected the “stiffening backbone of the country in a time of crisis.” Other partisans were heralding a new age in national defense as “local law enforcement steps up to the plate.”
Their chorus of clichés was joined by senators and members of Congress offering paeans to the locals while also urging the appropriation of billions of dollars for the nation’s biggest defense contractors for more fighter jets, aircraft carriers, and pricey missile defense systems that would do next to nothing to fight the asymmetric war in which America was now engaged. Fighter jets to try to stop small bands of terrorists determined to slip past the country’s flooded borders so they could create large-scale mayhem in crowded cities and rural outposts? Whoever had said you couldn’t possibly burn the candle of national defense at both ends clearly hadn’t anticipated politics and budgeting in an era of invasion. With her entire country under attack, Lana felt strongly that centralized command was the sine qua non of an effective national defense.
As for cybersecurity, amazingly enough, it had gone begging once again. Voters saw kinetic war because it showed on their video screens—bombs, blood, and broken bodies—so they supported steps to stop it. Understandable. Steps needed to be taken. Clearly. But what too many influential voices on the Hill and in the media failed to recognize was the “invisible invasion” of the country’s infrastructure that was taking place every second of every day by cybersaboteurs.
Those attacks came from carefully deployed electrons. Try selling that to a science-starved electorate. Not as sexy as a new class of fighter jets, nor as immediately powerful as next-generation smart bombs with their own visuals, but terrorists had formed a fifth column from afar by infiltrating millions of private and government devices to create botnets that hijacked the country’s own vast resources into an attack against their very hosts: jiu jitsu in the cyber age.
Lana took a breath and checked her rear-view, where Robin sat in the Charger with his aviator sunglasses fixed on her. She put the Prius in drive just as her phone went off again. She was tempted to take off, but couldn’t: a glance at a text showed tension on the home front now. Emma wanted Sufyan to come over. She couldn’t go to school. The principal had said the district didn’t have the resources to ensure the safety of its students with Emma in their midst.
At least she’s asking permission. And using her encryption. Finally. Maybe she’d even remembered to keep her Mace around, though Lana had her doubts; every time she’d checked, Em had come up empty-handed.
“U can c him @ home,” Lana texted back.
Tap-tap-tap.
Robin was at her window. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.” Lana glanced up. Couldn’t see his eyes behind those shades. Just as well. “I’m going to get moving here.”
But everything wasn’t fine. Her personal life was flooded, too—with confusion. Which might have explained her sudden itch to gamble, so palpable it felt like psoriasis of the psyche.
She grabbed her second phone. Her fingers stabbed the dial pad. Not for texasholdem.com: a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. Tonight at seven o’clock at the Hope Center in Bethesda.
You’re going, no matter what.
She got back on the road, pulling into CF’s underground garage fifteen minutes later.
Robin remained in her wake to the elevator where they stood silently as the security guard brought them up to her company’s reception area.
She noticed that Robin received “Good mornings” and smiles at every turn, already a fixture. Even the men, Jeff Jensen included, appeared impressed by him.
Maureen gave him a big smile and a wave. Lana could scarcely believe her youngest employ
ee, at twenty-three, could be interested in a man about twice her age.
But fit, Lana thought.
Don’t remind me.
Maureen tugged Lana aside. “May we talk privately?”
“Sure.”
Lana led the young woman into her office, where Maureen spoke up quickly: “I found something incongruous in the most popular Steel Fist chat room.”
“Shoot.” Lana arranged herself at her desk and started up her desktop computer.
“Almost all those guys rail against you, Emma, and Sufyan. Some are now raging about your dog and Don, but you and Emma and her boyfriend are the chief recipients of their animus.”
Lana nodded, pleased by Maureen’s use of language at a time when so many others were dumbing down their speech.
“But there’s one self-proclaimed white supremacist who conspicuously, at least to my way of thinking, omits any reference to Sufyan.”
“That is odd. Does he talk about any people of color?”
“Plenty. He’s got nothing good to say about Senator Booker or a certain President, and he hates—he puts that word in caps—the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their friends on the left, like Cornel West and Amy Goodman. He’s quite vociferous, too. I’ve compiled three pages of those comments.”
“So where do you think we should go from here?” Lana knew the route she wanted Maureen to take, but waited to see if the cyber swallows would actually land in Capistrano for the MIT grad.
“You should give me the go-ahead to hack Tahir Hijazi.”
Conspicuous, indeed, thought Lana, who quickly gave her permission.
Lana’s own effort ranged far from both Steel Fist’s chat rooms and Tahir’s efforts to stir up hatred against her family. Assuming it was Tahir, which felt like an eminently reasonable supposition.
She was far too busy digging into deeper vaults where Tahir’s quietest secrets apparently hid. And if her work and Maureen’s converged, it would give Lana a chance to observe the young woman’s skills firsthand.